I was overjoyed when I found out that cockeyed.com was a finalist in the 2003 Webby Awards.
The webby awards are very well known, albiet young institution on the web. These awards are given out every year in a celebration in San Francisco.
Cockeyed.com is my personal project, and while it has never won an award for design or user-friendliness, it has become a vast depository of quality, original content. . funny stories and pictures, more than 500 megabytes worth.

As soon as I found out about the "people's voice" awards at the webbys, I created a humorous "how-to-vote" guide and  placed it prominently on the front page of my website. Votes accumulated quickly, and within a few days cockeyed.com was winning the people's voice voting in the "Personal Web Page" category.

Towards the end of April, I noticed that a conspicuous write-in cantidate was accumulating a large number of votes, and using a familiar "how to vote" guide to elicit more. It was the webpage for jackjohnson2002, a politician who ran for office in Prince George's County, Maryland in 2002. 

If you are interested, you can view the similarities between jackjohnson's voting guide and my own here.

Five other write-in candidates had also borrowed my voting guide, namely wethepeoplemd.com, statedemocracy.com, indiademocracy.com, ezquestionaire.com and weblobbying.com.

It was obvious to me that some person or organization was behind all six of these websites. Not only had they each stolen my "how-to" guide, they were each using the same format, images and mostly the same text. The answer was easy  to find. Each site was designed and developed by V-Empower Inc.

V-empower doesn't have precise information regarding who is in charge, but Statedemocracy.com does.
It states:

"The brain behind the creation of the foundation is Mr. Shukoor Ahmed. He has vast experience in serving the citizens of the country in various capacities. 
Mr. Ahmed received his Bachelors in Sciences with Computer Information Systems as elective subject from Strayer University and his Master of Arts in Public Policy from American University with a major in Lobbying and minor in Campaign Management.

Mr. Ahmed founded V-Empower Inc., an organization committed to contributing its mite to strengthening democracy and empowering people. The company has created a number of political websites such as www.statedemocracy.com; www.weblobbying.com; www. ezcampaigns.com; www.estrawpoll.com; www.ezquestionnaire.com, just to name a few.

The Vote Turns

On about May 10th, Jackjohnson2002.com surpassed cockeyed.com in the Webby people's voice awards.

This was a somewhat surprising event, given that jackjohnson2002.com no longer serves any function, contains only 9 pages of information, has no sites linking to it and generates practically no traffic.

The only reason it wasn't surprising is because of the obvious skill of Mr. Ahmed Shukoor, and the ease with which online voting can be faked.








National President of the Ahmadiyya Youth Association with 46 Chapters (1999-2002).